Washington Confidential 24 – Mortimer · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 24Part 2 · RACKETS BY REMOTE CONTROL
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 24
Part 2 · RACKETS BY REMOTE CONTROL
MortimerEnglish
Our newspaper confreres, in the main, were willing to be hospitable and helpful when we galloped in and made no secret of our aims. We don’t expect them to write our books. But they often give us tips, which saves work.
The first question we asked was, “Who is the Washington Mafia boss?”
The invariable answer was that the local underworld was unaffiliated with the national setup, free and independent, self-contained.
All our experience made us reject that picture. We had traced and charted organized crime through the gang wars of Prohibition to this day. We had charged and it was being substantiated that no city of importance was left out of the clutches of the Mafia, with its brains in New York and its powerhouse in Chicago. It was inconceivable that a rich, large center on the Atlantic seaboard, almost a suburb of Manhattan, could be bypassed. So we found out for ourselves. This is the situation in Washington:
The National Syndicate, for reasons of prudence, has avoided first-hand operations in the District. You find few important Sicilian names in the police files. Vice, crime, gambling, narcotics and, to a smaller extent, contraband liquor, are farmed out by franchise to a cohesive local mob which deals with and pays tribute to national headquarters.
Despite tremendous influence, legal advice and guidance and the constitutional immunity against self-incrimination, the Mafia has an almost superstitious fear of Congressional committees. A city administration can be bought or scared or rigged. But nobody can capture 96 Senators and 435 Representatives. And any one of these is one of the immediate bosses of Washington; and any one of these can arise any day and demand a probe of anything. On the rare occasions when important racketeers were dragged to Washington on subpena, with all the assurances they got from many members beholden to them and the shocking obeisance paid them openly, they wet their pants in the witness chair.
Yet, these greedy gluttons can’t find it in their miserly souls to declare it an open town, any more than they can force themselves to pay honest income taxes, though they awaken in their silk pajamas screaming, from nightmare dreams about Al Capone and Alcatraz.
District of Columbia is and was dominated by Emmitt Warring, Gary Quinn, Sam Beard, the Sussman brothers and Attilio Acalotti. The chief operation of these men is gambling, which will be traced in more detail later. They staked out locations in Washington, worked together in harmony, well aware that the capital would not go for Chicago-style assassinations.
But the national Syndicate did not hesitate to work openly in the adjoining Maryland suburbs, where the late Jimmy La Fontaine, who died in bed at the age of 81 in 1949, was the local front man. Fontaine’s rococo gambling casino, across the street from the District line, was as far as the Mafia cared to go openly. His chief lieutenants were Snags Lewis, Pete Gianaris and Mike Meyers. Snags has pleaded guilty to a mild rap on a bargain which will take the heat off others.
We have described the dope setup in the District, where local wholesalers send to New York for supplies, so that the Mafia does not have to deliver them in the capital. By a similar procedure, the gamblers and other racketeers procure their wire service from representatives of the big mob, across the border in Maryland. Snags Lewis was the local wire service man.
When it came to such things as numbers, whoring, illicit liquor and after-hour spots in the District, the local boys tried to hold on to as much as they could. They didn’t want to divvy up with the Syndicate. The big mob didn’t like that.
When the Mafia moves in, it gears its method to local situations. For instance, Dallas, one of the last hold-outs, is being taken over at this writing by strong-arm work and gunplay.
But when the beach-front bookmaking syndicate in Miami held out, it was cut off from its wire service, then local cops did the gangsters’ work by raiding the recalcitrants, to make way for the Syndicate’s own operators.
It was clear to Frank Costello in New York and Charlie Fischetti in Chicago, the operating heads of the underworld, that gat-work would not be tolerated in Washington. They knew the Metropolitan Police couldn’t be counted on to cooperate, with J. Edgar Hoover on the grounds. Few understand why the F.B.I. has not acted against the Mafia. Its jurisdiction is circumscribed by Congress, and the black-handers have been smart enough to keep out of fields in which Hoover may act.
The outside mobsters adopted a third procedure to tighten their hold on the local underworld, one that had worked with great success in other towns. It came through with flying colors in Washington. Last year there was an epidemic of robberies of local underworld figures, and not by accident or coincidence.
One victim was Emmitt Warring. Three men forced their way into his home, at 3900 Macomb Street, and robbed it at gun-point. Insiders say the amount of cash lifted from Warring’s safe was about $100,000. Warring told newspapermen it was only $20,000. He refused to cooperate with the police and would not admit or deny that the holdup had taken place. In the same week, the same thugs held up Johnny Williams, a numbers racket boss. Robert “Ryebread” Schulman and Theodore “Little Joe” Scheve also were held up. Williams’ father-in-law is Dick Austin, a numbers king in Atlantic City and Washington.
Chief of Police Barrett said, “I am alarmed by the crimes. We can’t have this sort of thing going on here. Pretty soon somebody’s going to get shot.” That was Scheve. But nobody got arrested. Then Washington racketeers saw a great light. They made peace with the Big Mob, which established its regency over the District, leaving the former operators in as partners with nominal control.
George P. Harding, victim of the recent slaying in the Hideaway Club, engineered the Warring robbery for the Mafia. Harding was born in Italy and had a long and bloody career as a gunman and killer, before being slain by his friend and associate, Joseph Nesline.
Nesline, who admitted the shooting, is a four-time loser. He told police it was either “Harding or me.” His story was Harding had accused him of running out with his share of the gravy in a gangster-operated oil well deal in Texas, where Frank Costello and his boys are buying heavily into leases and royalties. The dead man had been sitting with George A. Clainos, white-slaver and member of the local Syndicate, who passed him a gun.
The actual cause of the killing, which we are telling you confidential, is that it was ordered from Mafia headquarters in Brooklyn, because Harding, who knew too much, was an intemperate drinker and was talking too much.
Harding had been warned “to be good or else” several months ago, through word transmitted by Tony Ricci, alias Tony Goebels, who is the message-center for the Unione Siciliano.
The formula of permitting local operators to retain management was followed last year when the mob moved into Tampa and Jacksonville, Florida, and was used also with much success in Newark, New Jersey, where the non-Italian mob of Abner “Longy” Zwillman was absorbed into the Mafia. The Cleveland branch, run chiefly by Jews and Irish, was given the same modus operandi and absorbed.
The chain of command and remittance from the District to top headquarters is through Prince Georges County, Maryland, where Gianaris handles the numbers intake from the District and Lewis superintends payments for horse wire service--which is utilized also as a clearing house to transmit receipts from all other illegal activities, entered on the books as payments for the services or as losses on bets.
La Fontaine’s organization is kept together by Lewis and Meyers. Charlie Ford, Washington lawyer, who appears frequently in this book as counsel for gamblers, vice-hucksters and bottle-clubs, is the trustee of La Fontaine’s fabulous estate. In this connection some complicated bookkeeping is required.
It develops La Fontaine was only a front man. Eighty percent of his holdings belonged to the Big Mob. His death brought intricate mixups, and what was his and what was the Mob’s had not been identified in full detail. The situation is similar to that which followed the slaying of Edward J. O’Hare, Chicago mobster, who operated race tracks for the Capone syndicate. The stock of Sportsman’s Park, Chicago, and the Miami Beach Kennel Club was in his name. He left it to his heirs and associates. It took years for the accounts to be straightened out, and when they were, some money was paid over in the form of a “loan” to Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, a close associate of the late Capone, who is one of the ruling heads of the secret Grand Council of the Mafia.
The La Fontaine payoff to the top was made through Nig Rosen of Philadelphia to Meyer Lansky of New York. Lansky is a tributary of Frank Costello and a gambling partner of Joe Adonis. Nig Rosen is a friend of Washington Police Chief Barrett.
La Fontaine was one of the most colorful men Washington ever saw. His legendary career as a gentleman gambler spanned half a century. This last of the gas-lit era gamblers was one of five children of a poultry dealer. He was apprenticed to his father’s trade and might have carved for himself a similar career, except for a fatal flaw in his make-up: he could not bear to kill a chicken, nor could he stand the thought of others killing chickens he had raised. He hid his favorites in his father’s attic.
A three-cent strike Jimmy made on the old St. Louis lottery netted him $12. With this he set up shop across the Potomac in Virginia. He then went to work for the Heath brothers, old-time gambling combine. He soon had his own card table and he prospered. Subsequently he opened the Mohican Club, near Glen Echo, Maryland. Expanding, he purchased a large tract in Prince Georges County and established “Jimmy’s Place.” Around it he built a high green fence and within it men won and lost fortunes. Women never got past the door and no man who couldn’t afford to lose was ever admitted again. It was staffed by more than a hundred carefully chosen attendants, all covered by social security. They made regular contributions to a retirement fund.
The house limit was $200 on craps, $500 a card on blackjack, and $10 on numbers, with no-limit games in private rooms for certain customers who could stand a tough tap. “Jimmy’s” catered to as many as 2,000 gamblers a night.
Oddly, La Fontaine never got out of the poultry business. His passion was cock-fighting and he maintained a stable of 100 birds. Seeing them killed in action did not affront him. He also made horse book and traveled from track to track. La Fontaine bankrolled Tex Rickard, the fabulous fight promoter, in his early days. After Rickard’s death he formed a silent partnership with Herman Taylor, Philadelphia fight promoter.
Jimmy served a jail term for income tax evasion and paid a fine of more than $200,000. The Big Mob had long cast covetous eyes on La Fontaine, who by now not only had his own profitable gambling enterprise on which he himself admitted paying off $100,000 a year for local protection, but he controlled also the entire underworld in the lush Maryland counties adjoining the District. About 20 years ago, emissaries from Philadelphia came down to muscle him out. One representative of Nig Rosen, a gunman named Milsie Henry, was mysteriously murdered, for which La Fontaine was loudly but not officially mentioned. The case is still unsolved. Shortly thereafter, La Fontaine was kidnaped by hoodlums from New York and Philadelphia. Before he was returned his family had to come up with $40,000 “expense money.” And the Mafia was declared in on his enterprises.
Most naïve Washingtonians believe the appointment of attorney Charlie Ford as the trustee of his estate was a logical sequence, as Ford is a gamblers’ lawyer. He testified before a house committee that he represented many gamblers, some of whom were such powers that they were unknown to the police or public as gamblers. He refused to divulge their identities. One is a liquor dealer and another, a local jeweler.
Ford has legal contacts with the topmost figures of the Mafia. When the wife of Charlie Fischetti, one of the most powerful men in the national underworld, the most powerful in Chicago, was subpoenaed before the Kefauver Committee, Ford flew to Chicago to represent her, though the Fischetti-Guzik gang has staffs of legal sharks who specialize in outwitting the authorities.
Quite often there is legal jockeying following the death of important gangsters like La Fontaine.
After Bugsy Siegel was slain in Beverly Hills, Morris Rosen showed up from New York at Siegel’s ornate Flamingo and took over all of the murdered man’s assets before his body was cold. They had never belonged to him at all. They were Syndicate property. So was 80 per cent of La Fontaine’s.
